Month: April 2016

Several months ago, I happened to look out my bedroom window during a rainstorm to see a tree bubbling. Really bubbling. I spent a few minutes wondering what in the world it could be, but I didn’t pursue it and eventually forgot about it – until I realized the tree had died.

Really, these trees should have been cut down a while ago. They’re right next to our house, and an electric wire goes through their branches. I’m surprised SWEPCO hasn’t either cut them down or at least trimmed them during their annual pre-ice storm mass prunings. I certainly wouldn’t complain if they did.

Turns out that bubbling was a bacterial disease called slime flux. When it rains, the bacteria release carbon dioxide, creating those bubbles. Evidently, it stinks, too. I’m glad I didn’t go outside to discover that. Yuck! It dried into this white business. I figured it killed the tree, but the Internets say that the disease itself usually doesn’t kill them. It probably had to do with the removal of chain link fence the tree had grown around when we had our relatively new privacy fence installed.

Anyway, I was outside with Penny this afternoon, minding my own business, when I saw this, which seems infinitely more gross than the white gunk:

GAH! That is so not okay with me. It even moves like Jello.

GROSSSSS! I had no idea what it was (except that it was probably a fungus), so I called Palmer, and I guess my Jello description helped him find it on Wikipedia. It’s called jelly fungus, it appears when it rains, which it did alllll last night, and it evidently tastes good? I’ll give that one a big, immediate NOPE. It also probably won’t kill the tree, which makes me feel a little better about it.

I’m trying really hard to appreciate rather than run away from nature, but stuff like this makes it hard. I’m still recovering from the ridiculous number of surprise spider webs I walked through on my hike with Penny the other day.

It’s a beautiful day. A clear blue sky and a break from the South’s rainy season. Penny and I had to take advantage of it.

Penny and I go hiking about once a week, but we’re what I call Level One Hikers. The Red River National Wildlife Refuge‘s yellow trail was the longest and nature-iest trail we’d been down, and that one’s completely flat and the grass is mowed regularly.

That’s not the case with the Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park in Blanchard, Louisiana. The trails aren’t mowed because they’re in the woods and not lined with river-plain grass. I think there’s more virginia creeper than anything else. I’m sure there’s a lot of poison ivy, too, though I was trying my best not to see it. Really, I was focusing on trying to spot snakes and keeping an eye on the orb weaver population. Which is massive.

The Caddo Trail, at 1.8 miles, is a great place to desensitize yourself to walking through spiderwebs. They’re everywhere. I had to apologize to a couple of orb weavers for destroying the webs they had constructed directly across the trail. Which also meant that Penny and I were the only people/dogs to hike it today (and probably for the last few days, as it poured rain yesterday morning).

I should probably also mention the mud. Because mud. The trail was full of it. Sure, I’d seen the warnings on TripAdvisor about hiking after a rain, but I was like, it didn’t rain today, so it must be fine. (Actually, I considered driving to Driskill Mountain near Arcadia because I figured, hey, it’s the highest point in Louisiana and must be dry, but it’s sooooo far away.) Yeeeeeah, there was mud everywhere. I’m glad I waterproofed my hiking shoes before I went.

Oh. And, unless it’s bone dry, I strongly suggest wearing actual trail shoes or boots. If I’d been wearing sneakers, I’d have been on my butt a few times.

Also: hot + wet = ALL THE MOSQUITOES. Every single one of them ever. Palmer and I went to a petrified forest in Mississippi last year, and I thought they had a lot of mosquitoes, but damn. I’ll figure out the extent of the damage tomorrow when I’m itching terribly. Which means you should take advantage of the huge box of Deep Woods OFF they have permanently attached to the front of the building. Spray the DEET all over yourself or you’ll regret it. My lousy little DEET-free Cutter didn’t…ahem…cut it.

So you had a terrible time, you say, right? No! We had a most excellent time! This is the naturiest nature I’ve been in since the last time I was in the Black Hills National Forest, which was waaaay too long ago. Walter B. Jacobs is Hiking Level Two, and that’s a great thing for Shreveport/Bossier. We need nature! And sometimes we’re better off if it’s not the regularly-mowed-trail sort. It was only 1.8 miles, but I feel like we accomplished something, if only not being bitten to death by snakes.

And we saw a huge turtle with a spiky tail! It plopped into a stream before I could get a picture of it, but still!

I can’t wait to go again, and I’m sure Penny can’t either. We’re lucky to have a great park like this so close to town, and we should support it. Walter B. Jacobs has programs all the time for people of all ages, and we should all be participating. Have a look at their Facebook page and try to make out there. It’s a half-hour drive that’s totally worth it.

Here’s the park’s trail guide, of which I haven’t seen a good copy online (I guess “good” is relative, as this copy was obviously crumpled in my hands while we hiked):

Yeah, yeah, it’s been a while. We’ve had a couple of false starts, but we’re going to get back on track…right?

The truth is that I haven’t been reading much lately. Hardly anything, really. In my defense, I’ve been busy. Besides work, I’ve started a second round of grad school (this one is Thesis Monster-free!), and I have a puppy that I mentioned in the last couple of posts. That doesn’t allow much time for reading unless you count the journal articles I’m assigned for class, and no one wants to hear about those.

So what am I going to do with this book blog, you ask? For now, at least, I’m going to broaden the scope. I’ve been doing some photoblogging elsewhere (here and here if you’re interested), but I decided that my own damn site, which I still pay for, should be home to the primary posts. So here we go. I’ve made a pretty drastic change to the theme that’ll better reflect what is happening here.

There will still be books. I just read Into the Wild, which had been on my Do Not Read List for a long time, and I really enjoyed it. Now I’m trying to get through A Walk in the Woods before a new DeLillo novel comes out on May 3. We’ll see how that goes. I’m also still kind of in the process of reading Redwall, which is super fun. There’s also a game called Stardew Valley, but we won’t talk about that here (except to say that if you like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon and have a PC, jump on it).

Does all this mean I’m back for good? I hope so. It won’t all be about books, and it hopefully won’t be about the dog, either, though you can tell from the featured image that she’s super-cute. She also goes with me everywhere the rules allow her to go.

One of which was the Linden Wildflower Trails Festival this past weekend, which involved neither wildflowers nor trails but did involve free puppies. I’ve posted some photos from that event:

My 35th birthday is coming up, and my lovely husband is getting me a sparkly new camera, so hopefully I’ll be able to spend lots of time taking pictures and posting them here. Most will be of hiking and (hopefully, before it gets too warm) camping. Otherwise, who knows. The school semester is about to end, so I should have a good month of free-ish time on my hands.